Chargeable-basis distribution of movie contents through an optical disc is an extremely large source of revenue for the movie suppliers such as Hollywood. The generating apparatus that professionals of movie production use for authoring is an indispensable apparatus for distributing movie contents through an optical disc, and higher quality therefor is required than ever. The authoring performed by such a generating apparatus determines format of the application layer of an optical disc, in production of a master of the optical disc. The data having the format determined by the authoring is called volume image. This volume image includes a digital stream that has been compressed and encoded in accordance with the MPEG2 standard, and also includes a scenario about this digital stream.
The conventional authoring used to target read-only DVD (generally called DVD-Video). However, recent attention is directed to how to perform authoring to read-only Blu-ray Disc (hereinafter “BD-ROM”) that is expected to make a market debut in the near future. The prime merit of distributing movie contents through the BD-ROM is that it enables distribution of movie contents that can be played back with high-definition, and so it is optimal for wide televisions of 32 and 40 models. The movie contents distributed through BD-ROM can be played back with almost as good quality as theater screens, and even movie fans who have sharpest eye will be impressed.
However, despite such a large merit of the BD-ROM over the DVD-Video, the DVD-Video still has an edge in that how penetrated and acknowledged it is in society, over the BD-ROM. It is quite unlikely that, even after emergence of the BD-ROM, distribution through the DVD-Video will stop being used. If distribution through the DVD-Video is expected to continue, the production studios will have to be ready for distribution through both of the existing DVD-Video and the BD-ROM. This will double the burden born by the production studios, since they have to expend twice as much effort as before, for one movie.